Internationally Lawful Regulation And Ecological Insurance Of Black Sea Natural Resources Usage
Internationally lawful regulation and ecological insurance of Black Sea natural resources usage
V.P. Plavich, V.D. Nayfleysh
I.I. Mechnikov National University of Odessa, Ukraine
The influence of a man on natural environment becomes the most important biospherical factor. The outlying and the Mediterranean seas are environed by especially bad influences, because of the highly developed industrial countries situated on their coasts.
The basins of these seas have become some peculiar settling pits as together with river and underground runoff waters the environmental pollution comes from all the surrounding watershed dry land. The Black Sea belongs to these reservoirs and it has been brought to the condition of ecological crisis.
Lately there has appeared a number of publications in which a dangerous natural situation in the Black Sea basin is ascribed not to the global pollution of the sea but to the powerful layer of hydrosulfuric waters coming from the bottom to the surface of the sea.
Does this danger threaten to the Black Sea in reality? The specialists who study ocean for many years answer this question.
The main influence on the Black Sea basin is exercised by the water flow of such rivers as Danube, Dnieper and Dniester. They bring to the sea heavy applications, toxic substances, radionucleids, pesticides, salts of heavy metals, fertilisation from the fields and organic substances which lead to “overfertilisation” or avtrofication of the reservoir. Another danger is the crude oil pollution; more than 10.000 tons of oil come to the Black Sea annually. Oil film covers constantly thousands of square kilometres of its surface and the spawn of many Black Sea fish dies.
The catastrophic situation is in the sea coasts zones. The enormous masses of developing microscopic organisms (including pathogenic germs) make water bad and unfit for swimming and it leads to a great recreation loss. The situation with pollution in coastal zones of Russia and Ukraine is aggravated with a bad condition and even a full absence of a sewage purification works system. As a result the Black Sea is polluted with industrial,
sanitary and rainfall sewage. It threatens with a danger of gastrointestinal and infectious diseases in the Black Sea health resorts (for example: some cases of cholera in Rostov in 1990).
The avtrofication of waters leads to developing of mass non pabulary, ballast water plant. The dying organisms come down to the bottom and during the summer time to the north-west of the sea where the water is shallow there appear the downfall of animals, because little oxygen is here, hydrogen sulphide appears and animals begin to die totally. Feculent water blocks the penetration of light to the deepness, and it brings to oppression and death of bottom algae.
If we don\’t take immediate action for reduction of pollution and avtrofication of the Black Sea basin all these dangerous events will catastrophically aggravate and have disastrous effects.
Therefore the ensurance of ecological risks can become one of the most effective economic mechanisms efficiently combining preventive control aided to the exclusion of ecological accidents and creation of permanent insurance funds of money serving as a financial guarantor of damage covering on the case of accident pollution of the sea environment.
In the given article the foreign experience considered is in the field of ecological ensurance and the ability of its usage in the Ukraine.
The exploration of the world\’s natural wealth began long ago and due to the development of the human society the antropogenic load on ecosystems of seas and oceans constantly grew. The process of water resources pollution has been developing especially intensively during the last 20-30 years and it brought things to the destruction of naturally physical balance and the complex of the World ocean exploration.
Unfortunately the North -Western part of the Black Sea and Odessa bay are not the exception. Systemless prospecting and underground mining of natural resources in the zone of shelf, actualization of dredging and coast-protecting structures, low technical condition of the port equipment, the exploitaition of the out-of-repair vessels and observation engineering - all of them were the reasons having led to the crisis in ecological situation in the coastal zone of the Odessa bay.
The most significant anthropogenic influence on the condition of the Black Sea ecosystem is exercised by the pollution of the sewage disposal which contains organic substances, heavy metals, pesticides, oil products, phenols, radioactive substances and other dangerous ingredients in concentrations in many times maximum safe exceeded.
A great contribution into pollution of the Black Sea makes a portage and transshipment of ecologically dangerous cargo. Only through Odessa ports annually more than 12 million tons of oil products, 3 mln tons of ammonia, 4mln tons of carbide are transported. Ecologically dangerous for the Black Sea is a newly born Ukrainian tankage, oil loaded, cement and other kinds of terminals.
In the conditions given (together with payments and fees for a downthrow of polluted substances into the water) a system of ecological risks insurance in the sea natural usage may become an important effective mechanism which can solve the problem of the sea pollution.
The ecological insurance is a certain kind of insurance which provides a responsibility of objects (the sources of higher ecological risks) for the damage made by a sudden accident pollution of the environment. The ecological insurance includes the following: insurance of responsibility of the vessel owner for the leak of oil products and pollution of waters and sea coast; the responsibility insurance for the nuclear damage made to the third side while using the nuclear energy, the responsibility insurance for pollution of water resources, atmosphere air, soils and so on.
In the USA and a number of European countries the ensurance of ecological risks was introduced in the 60-s. It was fulfilled on the freewill basis in the frames of universal civil responsibility of enterprises.
Special pools of ecological insurance exist abroad and they are used while making insurance of dangerous, great and non-familiar risks. For the first time such a pool of money was created in Japan in 1979 for responsibility insurance of an accident outpouring of oil. It united 38 districts including 22Japanese and 16 foreign ones. Nowdays the pools of ecological insurance were created in Great Britain, Netherlands, France, Sweden and other countries. The advantages of the pools are in the fact that they allow to unite the insurance companies for a joint insurance of ecological risks. Every company gives to the pool the risks insured and gets a definite part of contributions or insurance premiums collected by the pool, and in this very part the company carries a responsibility on prospective damages.
In the frames of the International Union of Sea Insurance (IUSI), uniting national organizations and separate insurance companies which make insurance of sea ships, cargo and freight, there is a constant committee on responsibility insurance of the sea pollution. The financial basis of IUSI is formed thanks to the member contributions, the quantity of which depends on the character of actions made by the Union in the calendar year. Usually each member of the IUSI pays annually some 3000 Swiss francs.
The mutual insurance society is an other kind of insurance of ecological risks used in foreign practice. It is based on the creation of large companies own insurance reserve funds. In sea insurance there are clubs of mutual insurance, which unite great ship owners with the purpose of division of a probable risk between the members of the club to compensate the coming damages on collective basis. Today there are 70 clubs of mutual insurance in the world, mainly in Great Britain, Sweden, USA. Analysis of the foreign experience helps us to make a conclusion, that ecological insurance is very special and it is the most difficult kind of insurance, having its own specificity such as the recruitment of highly qualified specialists, experts- ecologists. There appear some difficulties in making differences between the indeliberate and intentional risks; ambiguity of judicial acts concerning the rights on compensation of the third damaged side, the difficulty of expertise of the developing risk, when the cause of damage lay in events happened long ago. But as a whole the insurance of ecological risks is an effective economic mechanism, allowing to compensate either the damage of the third persons or insurants’ losses happening as a result of accident pollution of the environment. As for our country, the Law of the Ukraine “About Survive of Surrounding Natural Environment” (1991) takes into consideration the possibility of fulfilment of goodwill and necessary state insurance of citizens and their property, the property and profits of enterprises, institutions and organisations in the case of damage, made due to pollution of environment and worsening of natural resources quality. But the law “ About Ecological Insurance” strictly defining the whole complex of lawful relations in this field is not adopted and as a result the insurance of ecological risks is fulfilled neither by the state nor by the separate organisations.
But it is necessary to mention that in some countries of CIS and the Ukraine there are some methodical and methodological works on formation a system of environment pollution insurance risk. On the 29-30 of June 1995 in Moscow there took place the first All-Russian conference on the problems of theory and practice of ecological insurance. During this conference a lot of questions were discussed among them: the civil responsibility of subjects of economic activity for pollution of environment and mechanism of its insurance support. In Committee on ecology of Russian Federation State Duma there prepared a project of federal law “About Ecological Insurance” and it got the approval of participants of the conference and it was recommended for adoption.
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